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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

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I'm pleased to confirm that BAND PRO will be launching our DeepX housing at the Cine Gear Expo in LA, 1 July - 3 July 2012.

I'm honoured to be with such a great company. I will be available at the show to answer any questions and, of course, to show the DeepX housing to anyone interested.

I hope to see you guys there.:beer:
 
Txema Vega said:
Filmed and produced by Txema Vega / Underwater Film Service. Editing and Color grading by Victor Subirana. Music by Cristian Vogel. Graphics by Sandra Clua. Filmed in Neno 33 - Brussels (deepest pool in the world). Shot with Gates Deepred housing . Camera Red one , Lens Ultraprime .
https://vimeo.com/41165409
www.txemavega.com
Click to expand...

Great stuff Txema. Thx.
 
Underwater Documentary: "Realm of Giant Sharks"

Underwater Documentary: "Realm of Giant Sharks"

We re now in post on our documentary entitled:
Galapagos
"Realm of Giant Sharks"

So back in Sept. & Oct. of 2011 Myself, Alfredo Barroso and Thomas Lucas took off to Darwin for several weeks with Jonathan Green who organized an extensive Whale Shark Satellite tagging program along with University of Ca. Davis; the Darwin Foundation and the Galapagos Islands Park. This was a three trip expedition in which we took part on the last two expeditions. We shot on mixed formats: R1 mx; Epic; HVX 200; a panasonic 1080 handy-cam; Nikon D7000 and a few GoPros....I've posted some past frame grabs from RCX and now we have finished our edit as well as narration and composing. We're here at my place now doing the final color grade and a bit of editorial work. This is a self-funded doc in which we all took part in financing the trip, our time, gear investment and post processing investment (time & equipment). There are four of us partners and i mention this only in that because of todays technology (Software, Equipment and the internet) can we do this sort of venture. Thomas Lucas (one of the partners) is a "producer" with HULU TV---not directly affiliated with them, but is one of HULU's producers of content and has a "station" if you will.....Additionally he has the same with Youtube---these are not just place you put a clip and watch how many hits you get, but rather a new way of watching TV or direct feed content. I can go into this in depth, but leave it at the fact is that there are a LOT of folks dumping cable and moving on to Internet ON-DEMAND programming or at least adding it to their homes....things like Apple TV; Roku and much more...So this now opens up ADVERTISING dollars flowing to frequently watched programs & specifically targeting online television---like we have all seen how youtube and others are now full of commercials....not goot for us as consumers, but great for those of us that are producing material . Returns are some-what unknown at this point, but we have a pretty good idea based on past shows of what to expect. There-fore allowing us the time and investment to spend X dollars on "spec" productions.
....ok, enough of that...but this leads now to cutting the program here in-house: some shots attached of us cutting. The mess is kind of typical around here while prepping gear for a shoot next week and cleaning gear that just came back from a shoot.

Post work process:
Originally we began our cut/edit converting all material to pro-res and cut on FCP. NOW (last week) we converted the entrie XML and dropped it on Premier Pro using CS 5.5---while this sounds easy, it was oh so Painful ! we then had to re-link EVERY clip manually Premier lacks SEVERELY in this functionality---where FCP is so easy to re-link footage. Great if all assets are in the same folders and "tree structure" BUT if that changes, you will be faced with a LONG and tiring process of re-linking. Anyway, next we replaced all the .mov clips with the NATIVE codec clips....so R3d, AVCHD, H264 and others...we had 5 different cameras and 4 different codecs on one project timeline --or rather we do have it on one timeline--we have up to six tracks of video--piles of effects added to clips....some more than others, but if you have cut underwater footage, then you know how this goes with the red channel and working a look into the sequence of shots. The R3d's are incredibly resistant to being stretched to great limits where other 1080p material degrades quickly. VERY NICE to see how far we can push the R3d's.

So...FCP for cud and initial edit; transfer to Premier Pro for final edit and color correction using 3rd party plugins: Color Finesse & Colorista....we COULD use more and dynamic link to After Effects for more color/post, but i saw no need....and how nice it is to keep EVERYTHING inside of one program. Now, we did do some testing and there are a few bugs here and there when going from Premier to AE and back....so we just decided not to do that for now. Additionally we are running a RR card, Quadra 4000 NVIDIA card from a MacPro late 2008 with 32gigs ram and for monitoring:
from Quadra 4000: HP Dreamcolor 24" monitor & Dell 2410 27" monitor
Matrox MXO2 LE I/O box: running dual display: HDMI out to Panni 50" plasma & then dual SDI into AJA dual to single link 3g converter into a Flanders FSI 2461w monitor.....SURPRISINGLY we have it all working very well....we know what we CANNOT do...we also tried CS 6.0, but there was no Matrox monitoring even with new firmware from Matrox--so we went back to 5.5--would have loved to go more with 6 and the extra tools and ease of use they offer, but just not stable enough.

Immediate Problems we have seen and solved: When dropping effects, we noticed some shots had a flickering effect---problem: GPU acceleration using CUDA and graphics card is causing some type of problem. Solution: erase preview clips for THAT problematic shot and then re-render using SOFTWARE acceleration. ---this completely took us by surprise and slowed us down tremendously....takes WAY longer to re-render using only software and not GPU....so that is a BIG BUG and problem. We actually have a list of issues that we will send to Adobe and Matrox, but bottom line is we are cutting away with a giant mix of codecs and it works....sure we saw all the videos of folks cutting on laptops etc....but what i don't get is that we don't get the realtime playback like i see on youtube vids....maybe our mixed codecs, 6 tracks video and stacked effects is the cause....but what i am still reeling about is we can actually do this...

Crew:
Shooters:
Alfredo Barroso
Jonathan Green
Johnny Friday

Writer/Director: Thomas Lucas

DP: Johnny Friday

Colorist: Paul Herrin--he's the guy at the controls in pics below
(shout out to Paul here---Knows his stuff and HIGHLY recommended--gets it done)

RED LINK to Other Thread with additional postings & photos:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...ral-History-Documentary&p=1000448#post1000448

More to follow up as we push forward. And some HD trailers to follow with coloring, sharpening etc...to follow as well.
 

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And just so everyone else knows, Johnny trained me on the Gates Deep Red/Red One MX in the Sea of Cortez a few years ago, see my signature for the demo reel. I've carried those invaluable lessons forward with my underwater Epic, Johnny's experience with National Geographic and a host of other productions, well, those are lessons you just can't buy, at any price. You gotta be there to experience it. It did cost me a lot of beer though, Johnny is a thirsty man.

Anyone looking for a magic u/w operator, call Johnny. If he happens to be busy, call me. My rates are a lot cheaper! :-)
 
Hey guys, I'm shooting an ad off the coast of Sabah next weekend, with a Deep Epic and a bunch of Arri Ultrprimes. We're not going to be filming any deeper than 10m and I'll have 4,000w of lights on the housing. Any advice on filtering? My thoughts are to shoot RAW and fix any coloring in post.
 
Paul, highly recommend NO FILTERING. You have so much depth in the image to stretch it beyond belief. and likely (i tried this already)....if you put a red or magenta filter on, you'll be working the channels to remove that color. I like much better to manipulate the individual channels and think you get a better look....but that's me.
good luck.
 
In case you missed it, here's some stills from Johnny's Galapagos project. Big thanks to him for having me down to color. Had a great time. These guys definitely know what they're doing under the water. I'll give the disclaimer again: primary coloring in premiere - just the basics. Check out this thread for more info: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?78394-CS-5-5-amp-Underwater-Natural-History-Documentary

If you want to see the big ones you're gonna have to watch the doc ;)

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Paul, plus one on no filters, plenty of light to work with at the depths you'll be shooting, plus the extra stop or two is well worth having.

As a side note, I worked on a project last year involving actors and a director who were new to diving, the shot list called for rapid bounces between 50 ft to 10 ft, actors taking off their scuba gear and swimming around at depth, very surprised nobody ended up in a recompression chamber. I'm sure you have all that sorted, just wanted to mention it.
 
Good point, Tom. I think with ours will be the opposite. The storyboard has everyone at the same depth throughout, so we're going to have to watch our depth gauges very carefully to ensure that the colour balance is the same between different shots. I'm going to go in with an extra kilo of lead and let the BCD do the work.
 
Hi all,

Howard Hall just returned from the Bahamas / Oceanic White Tips. DEEP EPIC w/ Tokina 10-17.

HH DEEP EPIC Oceanic WT - 1.jpgHH DEEP EPIC Oceanic WT - 2.jpgHH DEEP EPIC Oceanic WT - 3.jpg

J-
 
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